50% Class 12 CBSE students who asked for re-evaluation got more marks

NEW DELHI: Ishrita Gupta is the Class XII CBSE board topper in Nagpur today because she didn't accept her low marks in Political Science, and opted for re-evaluation. A brilliant student, Ishrita had more than 95 marks in all other subjects. Sure enough, re-evaluation showed 17 of her answers had been incorrectly marked, and her score increased by 22.


Rohit Malik (name changed) from Delhi also saw his marks go up after re-evaluation as he had not been scored on three correct answers. These are not isolated cases. In fact, every second applicant for re-evaluation this year has gained marks.

In all, 9,111 Class XII candidates applied to have their papers checked again, and evaluation mistakes were found in 4,632 cases.

The common mistakes include giving zero marks for correct answers, and not evaluating a series of answers.

CBSE has initiated action against at least 214 teachers for "huge" blunders . Of these teachers, 81 are under the Dehradun regional office, and 55 under Allahabad.

Students can apply for re-evaluation only after seeking retotalling. TOI had reported on June 24 that totalling errors were also high even though maths and computer science teachers were put on the job this year.

To prevent such mistakes, CBSE lets two teachers evaluate each paper, and board officials say the errors have declined. A comparison with previous years is not possible because, last year, re-evaluation was done case-by-case on a Delhi high court order, and CBSE has not shared data for re-evaluation in 2016.

Anurag Tripathi, secretary, CBSE, told TOI the two-evaluator system is successful as "99.6 per cent of the copies are correctly evaluated."

The 0.4 per cent error rate, he said, exists because of the pressure on evaluators: "Around 50,000 evaluators are dealing with 61.34 lakh copies."

Tripathi said the board had decided to re-introduce re-evaluation this year so that students didn't suffer due to errors.

"We have tried to minimise the errors, which right from verification to reevaluation are at an all-time low, and CBSE will continue its efforts," he said.

However, school principals said the sharp increase in marks after re-evaluation is something new. The principal of a South Delhi school suggested that CBSE email answer scripts to students since evaluation is centralised and all the marks are uploaded online in real-time. "The process of retotalling and re-evaluation will become simpler as those whose copies are clean won't apply."

Read this story in Marathi
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